Trump Should Resume His Goal of Improving American History and Civics Education

Trump Should Resume His Goal of Improving American History and Civics Education

This was something Trump was talking about doing a few years ago. He should bring it back.

From the Federalist:

Trump Should Revive His Pro-America 1776 Commission On Day One

While other media outlets focused on the historic reelection of Donald Trump, the thrill of victory, and the agony of defeat, The Hill offered its readers a summary of what the president-elect has said he intends to do on Day One. This extensive to-do list includes restoring American energy independence, pardoning the Jan. 6 protestors, and, of course, cracking down on illegal immigration.

I would like to offer a modest addition to this impressive agenda: Trump should issue an executive order to restore his all-but-forgotten 1776 Commission. Given the Democrats’ efforts to gaslight the electorate into believing that Trump’s reelection is a “threat to democracy,” young Americans’ historical and civic illiteracy is a clear and present danger to the Republic and it cannot be allowed to continue.

Trump created the commission the day before Election Day in 2020 with the purpose of “[establishing] a clear historical record of an exceptional Nation dedicated to the ideas and ideals of its founding.” Its goal was to provide a much-needed corrective to anti-American propaganda masquerading as history such as the “1619 Project,” whose “radicalized view of American history lacks perspective, obscures virtues, twists motives, ignores or distorts facts, and magnifies flaws, resulting in the truth being concealed and history disfigured.” The commission’s report, published two days before Trump left office, sketched out a basic curriculum that balanced American exceptionalism as reflected in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution with the darker aspects of our history, such as slavery and Jim Crow.

Predictably, the usual suspects had a hissy fit. NBC News accused the commission of “whitewashing historical narratives,” while professional race-baiter Ibram X. Kendi called the report “the last great lie from a Trump administration of great lies.” The journal Foreign Policy published a hatchet job from a grad student “expert” likening the commission’s recommendations to the educational policies of authoritarian regimes like Russia and China.

Donations tax deductible
to the full extent allowed by law.